Review of The Search for a Common Language: Environmental Writing and Education Edited by Melody Graulich and Paul Crumbley

This edited collection grew out of a symposium held at Utah State University in Logan in 2002. According to the editors, the symposium's purpose was to "publicly explore the particular ways environmental writing educates the public through a fusion of science and literary expression." The Search for a Common Language achieves that purpose by including short prose pieces-ranging from memoirs, essays on specific locations, and scientific papers - as well as poetry on natural themes. The range of topics and genres and the inclusion of poetry provide a variety of ways to talk about the environment and reach out to different audiences to educate them about the natural world.

Using Genetics to Assess Differentiation Among Raccoons in an Area with Variable Rabies Status in Alabama

The western spread of raccoon rabies in Alabama has been slow and even appears to regress eastward periodically. While the disease has been present in the state for over 30 years, areas in northwest Alabama are devoid of raccoon rabies. This variation resulting in an enzootic area of raccoon rabies primarily in southeastern Alabama may be due to landscape features that hinder the movement of raccoons (i.e., gene flow) among different locations. We used 11 raccoon-specific microsatellite markers to obtain individual genotypes to examine gene flow among areas that were rabies free, enzootic with rabies, or had only sporadic reports of the disease. Samples from 70 individuals were collected from 5 sampling localities in 3 counties. The landscape feature data were collected from geographic information system (GIS) data. We inferred gene flow by estimating FST and by using Bayesian tests to identify genetic clusters. Estimates of pairwise FST indicated genetic differentiation and restricted gene flow between some sites, and an uneven distribution of genetic clusters was observed. Of the landscape features examined (i.e., land cover, elevation, slope, roads, and hydrology), only land cover had an association with genetic differentiation, suggesting this landscape variable may affect gene flow among raccoon populations and thus the spread of raccoon variant of rabies in Alabama.

The People's Hour and the Social Gospel: George Howard Gibson's Gilded Age Search for an Organization of the Kingdom of God

Previous studies of the Social Gospel movement have acknowledged the fact that Social Gospelers were involved in multiple social reform movements during the Gilded Age and into the Progressive Era. However, most of these studies have failed to explain how the reform experiences of the Social Gospelers contributed to the development of the Social Gospel. The Social Gospelers’ ideas regarding the need to transform society and their strategies for doing so were largely a result of their personal experiences as reformers and their collaboration with other reformers. The knowledge and insight gained from interaction with a variety of reform methods played a vital role in the development of the ideology and theology of the Social Gospel. George Howard Gibson is exemplary of the connections between the Social Gospel movement and several other social reform movements of the time. He was involved in the Temperance movement, was a member of both the Prohibition Party and the People’s Party, and co-founded a Christian socialist cooperative colony. His writings illustrate the formation of his identity as a Social Gospeler as well as his attempts to find an organization through which to realize the kingdom of God on earth. Failure to achieve the changes he desired via prohibition encouraged him to broaden his reform goals. Like many Midwestern Social Gospelers Gibson believed he had found “God’s Party” in the People’s Party, but he rejected reform via the political system once the Populists restricted their attention to the silver issue and fused with the Democratic Party. Yet his involvement with the People’s Party demonstrates the attraction many Social Gospelers had to the reforms proposed in the Omaha Platform of 1892 as well as to the party’s use of revivalistic language and emphasis on producerism and brotherhood. Gibson’s experimentation with a variety of ways to achieve the kingdom of God on earth provides new insight into the experiences and contributions of lay Social Gospelers. Adviser: Kenneth J. Winkle